New Kyo-Ani work depicts subtle student drama
By Thankyou-Tatsuo / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun
The anime this month:
“Hibike! Euphonium” (Sound! Euphonium)
Kyoto Animation Co., which started a band craze with “Keion!” (K-On!), is the animation production company to watch at the moment. The company, which has steadily provided fine-quality works, has been a trendsetter of TV anime particularly in the last 10 years, since “Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu” (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) in 2006.
Fans affectionately call the company “Kyo-Ani” and put great trust in its brand. The company has produced a wide range of works, from fantasy to mystery, which are popular among both men and women.
The latest work from Kyo-Ani is “Hibike! Euphonium” (Sound! Euphonium), which airs on several channels, including Tokyo MX TV, from 12:30 a.m. on Wednesdays. In contrast to “Keion!” which featured a popular music club at a high school, “Hibike!” features a high school brass band club. The heroine, Kumiko Omae, used to belong to a school brass band during her middle school days. When her middle school band fails to get into a national meet, which had been the members’ goal, she sees one member, Reina Kosaka, crying with frustration. Kumiko says to her, seemingly bewildered, “Did you really think we could make it to the nationals?”
Yes. Although the members said that going to the nationals was their goal, somehow it ended up being more like a daydream than a true objective. Looking at Reina seriously facing the challenge, Kumiko has feelings of guilt while gradually accepting that she is unable to focus on the challenge like Reina.
She then enters a high school a bit far away from the middle school to reset everything and start anew. Listening to a performance by the high school’s brass band, she thinks of doing something else because it wasn’t that great. She goes to see the band nonetheless, taken by a classmate. To her surprise, she finds Reina there.
While telling a story about music with a high school girl as the central character, this anime has a completely different atmosphere from “Keion!” which mainly shows endless, sparkling days of popular music band members who actively enjoy music and start from scratch the activities of a school club on the verge of abolition.
By contrast, “Hibike! Euphonium” is likely to head for a more subtle and delicate drama of a group of students, considering that it is already depicting the differences in ways of thinking between the members.
In one of the scenes in the anime’s second episode, the teacher in charge of the brass band tells the members to decide on their goal for the year together. The members vote by a show of hands on whether they should aim for the nationals or just enjoy playing in the band.
While most students wear a polite face and raise their hands for the nationals, Kumiko can’t. She also doesn’t raise her hand for just having fun playing the instruments without any purpose. It’s an expression of a gray area — that gray feeling many people experience on a daily basis, and this anime dares tread into that realm.
After many members vote for the nationals, fellow member Aoi Saito, Kumiko’s friend since childhood, speaks to her. Aoi is the only one who voted for playing for fun. She says, “Everyone hides how they really feel and just follows the path of least resistance. The school, the band, teachers and students — they all do it because otherwise they’d clash with each other.”
The fear of going against somebody or going for something that cannot be attained without there being friction — I believe this anime will surely depict that “something.”
(The next installment will appear June 6.)
Thankyou-Tatsuo is a manzai comedian, linguist of the Japanese language and anime connoisseur.
